1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an automatic transmission control apparatus and more particularly to an automatic transmission control apparatus and method that accelerates the warming-up of an internal combustion engine.
2. Description of the Related Art
Automatic transmission control apparatuses have been proposed which have an automatic shift mode in which the automatic transmission is automatically shifted (hereinafter will be referred to as “automatic mode”) and a manual shift mode in which the driver manually changes the shift range of the automatic transmission (hereinafter will be referred to as “manual mode”). According to such automatic transmission control apparatuses, the driver can manually switch the shift mode of the automatic transmission between the automatic mode and the manual mode (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-60734 (JP-A-2004-60734)).
According to the above-described automatic transmission control apparatuses, the automatic transmission is normally operated in the automatic mode that does not require any manual operation by the driver. On the other hand, when the manual mode is selected, the automatic transmission is controlled through the shift lever operation by the driver. Thus, in the manual mode, the driver can more freely accelerate the vehicle and apply engine brake, thus controlling the driving of the vehicle just as he or she desires.
In recent years, in an attempt to solve the problem that the combustion efficiency is low and emissions (e.g., carbon dioxides, nitrogen oxides) therefore increase when the temperature of coolant of an internal combustion engine is low, an automatic transmission control apparatus has been proposed which, although not having a manual mode, switches the shift point table from a normal shift point table to a warming-up acceleration shift point table in which the shift points are shifted to the high speed side and performs shift control using said map when the temperature of engine coolant is low (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 06-123346 (JP-A-06-123346)).
According to the automatic transmission control apparatus of JP-A-2004-60734, however, in the manual mode, the automatic transmission is controlled through the shift lever operation by the driver and therefore the drive state requested by the driver can be established. In the manual mode, however, the driver can shift up the transmission just as he or she desires even in a state where the internal combustion engine needs to be warmed up, and this makes it difficult to accelerate the warming-up of the internal combustion engine sufficiently.
According to the automatic transmission control apparatus of JP-A-06-123346, the shift point table is switched from the normal shift point map to the warming-up acceleration shift point map upon shift control for the automatic transmission. That is, this publication does not take into consideration automatic transmissions having manual modes. Therefore, if the driver manually shifts up the automatic transmission, the engine speed decreases and this delays the warming-up of the internal combustion engine.